Put simply, the secret to Strom Thurmond's political longevity was his ability to change with the times without compromising his principles.

Some call it political expediency. Others call it enlightenment. Others say leadership.

It worked for the senator for nearly eight decades.

On Thursday, the final chapter was written and the book closed on the senator's illustrious political career, which spanned 77 years. He died at the age of 100 in his hometown of Edgefield, the oldest and longest-serving senator in U.S. history.

He will not be forgotten.

His name is on a half-dozen school and college buildings, a dam and lake, a federal building, several streets and highways, and a biomedical research center.

Thurmond was a political legend at home, a conservative who rose above his distaste for government spending to bring the bacon back to South Carolina.

He also was a regular guy who, through his longevity and prolonged public service, achieved mythic status. He did favors for four generations of South Carolinians.

Doting on his constituents was the secret of Thurmond's political success. He delivered goods for his state in a way that most politicians only dreamed of.

In the Senate, his platform was simple and straightforward: helping people, smaller government, lower taxes and power to the states. He was never a great orator; his name is not attached to any monumental legislation. He will be remembered, political scholars say, for his longevity.

Thurmond led a remarkable life.

He was born when Teddy Roosevelt was president. He heard Booker T. Washington speak, was around when Mark Twain was alive, was elected as county superintendent of education during the Depression, and landed at Normandy in 1944 in a glider behind enemy lines.

FROM DIXIECRAT TO THE GOP

Thurmond came out of Edgefield County's tradition of segregationist politics that went back to "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, the notorious white supremacist. He carried these views into national politics.

In his heyday, Thurmond vehemently opposed landmark civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s. He helped draft the Southern Manifesto, calling for mass resistance to desegregation.

"There's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches," Thurmond said during his 1948 run for president. He won 39 electoral votes, all from Southern states.

Thurmond routinely condemned all legislation, court decisions and government rulings that boosted civil rights or integration.

He later gave the longest filibuster in Senate history, against the 1957 civil rights bill. In 1964, he became the prototype of the Dixiecrat-turned-Republican, declaring: "If the American people permit the Democratic Party to return to power, freedom in this country as we know it is doomed."

Though his opposition to integration was a hallmark of Thurmond's early career, his segregationist past seems all but forgotten. Thurmond took steps to reach out to black voters. In 1971, he became the first U.S. senator from the South to hire a black aide. While he did not get a large percentage of the black vote, he worked to improve race relations and bring aid to black communities. In his last election in 1996, Thurmond received more black votes than any other Southern Republican, winning 22 percent.

In 1964, Thurmond had switched his affiliation to the Republican Party, a move historians say marked the first step toward the party's eventual dominance in the South.

'SOUTHERN STRATEGY'

During the '70s, he energetically revised his personal history, softening some of his political habits.

Thurmond later supported racial integration, attributing the shift to keeping in tune with the nation.

He credited himself as the governor who abolished South Carolina's poll tax. In 1991, he voted in favor of extending the Voting Rights Act. He supported the 1986 bill that made Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday.

In his best molasses mumble, Thurmond explained his change this way: "The whole situation has changed. And you've got to respond to changes. If you can't, you'll get lost in the fight."

He was most proud of his decision to switch parties in 1964 to endorse GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Republicans finally broke the "Solid South," winning in South Carolina and elsewhere.

But Democratic dominance did not end in the state. Many of Thurmond's followers remained Democrats. Consequently, Thurmond didn't make a great deal of the GOP label in those early years. Nor did he try to build the party as such.

When Republican U.S. Rep Albert Watson ran for governor in 1970 and lost, Thurmond was convinced more than ever that he had to look after his own interests. Republicans were too few in number to elect one of their own. So, he downplayed his GOP label. But he made it respectable for many white Southern conservatives to vote Republican.

In 1968, the Thurmond switch produced dividends for the GOP. He became the kingmaker at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, playing a critical role in Richard Nixon's nomination. Nixon was so impressed he asked Thurmond and his top aide, Harry Dent, to draw up a campaign battle plan to help deliver the South to the GOP in the 1968 November general election.

The famous "Southern strategy" helped Nixon narrowly defeat then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon gave the once Democratic South the credit for his victory, which had a profound impact on national politics later.

The South has never voted Democratic again, except in 1976 when Jimmy Carter was elected president.

JUST 'OL' STROM'

Today, a majority of Republican legislators in Congress are from the South. And Republicans control one or both houses of several Southern state legislatures.

Thurmond paved the way, showing you could vote Republican in the South and the sky wouldn't fall.

The senator, whose political career spanned most of this century, was many things: progressive educator, New Dealer, soldier, race-baiter, presidential aspirant, Goldwater Republican and husband of beauty queens.

But to South Carolinians he was just "Ol' Strom." There'll never be another like him.

As former President Bush once put it, "The Lord, indeed, broke the mold when he made Strom Thurmond."